Abstract

Kraak argues that the establishment of South African universities of technology was the result of political lobbying rather than being informed by a rational process of policy development. This conceptualisation has been largely focused on the development of institutional type rather than on academic substance. Broad notions of the economy, globalisation, knowledge and technology are taken as given and, as such, beyond interrogation. In many ways, universities of technology are being conceptualised as modern universities and this trajectory may be detrimental, particularly since they have to operate within a postmodern context. To create a postmodern university, however, one must use postmodernist approaches and this might be more difficult for the universities of technology than it might be for pure and comprehensive universities. Traditionally, technikons have shied away from anything philosophical or theoretical and there is no guarantee that, in its new guise, things are going to be fundamentally any different.